Hello, and welcome to the exploring Washington State podcast. My name is Scott Cowan. And I'm going to be your host for this episode and for the future episodes as well. This is my inaugural episode first time behind the mic. And if you've ever done this before, you know that it's a lot harder than people make it out to be. If you've never done this before, I encourage you to give it a try, then maybe you'll have some sympathy for me. But if I can't poke fun at myself, who else is going to do it? So stay in the inaugural episode I just want to spend a few seconds going over a few things with you to give you the expectations of what you can expect from us moving forward. So my goal for this podcast is to help showcase the amazing people in places that make Washington State such a wonderful place to live, work and visit. I'm a lifelong resident of our great state. And about three and a half years ago, I decided that it was time for me to do something to help promote and showcase the people and places and events throughout the state. And so I created the website explore Washington State, and my team and I, we've been sharing and creating content about the people in places of Washington state for last three half years. Maybe you've seen us, we're pretty big on social media. We're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, the website itself, other platforms as well. But one of the things that we found is that it's not that easy to go deep in a 600 to 1000 word article. It's not that easy to go deep on Instagram photograph. So the podcast is my chance to sit down and maybe virtually, maybe in person, sit down, have that conversation with somebody who's doing something really cool or who's Been someplace that has a great story to tell us about a hike that they took, or a restaurant that they visited. So this, this is my attempt to have those conversations and then share them with you. Each week, I'm going to invite artists, creatives, musicians, makers, hikers, and bikers, small business owners, anyone who has a story to come and have a conversation and share what makes Washington State home to them. There's so many famous people from Washington State, from musicians, and artists, athletes. So many cool businesses have been started here, you know, but each week, I'm going to invite people in to have a conversation where they can share with you their stories. These people will be artists and creatives, makers and musicians hikers and by makers, small business owners, anybody who has a story that they want to share about Washington State. Some of our early episodes, Ward winning coffee roaster, artists that are creating hand stamped t shirt lines, their clothing is all hand done. One art guy, we just had a conversation with makes wallets and key chains out of old baseball gloves. That's really, really cool. Very cool. Um, we're going to talk about roller derby. We're going to talk about hikes you can take with your pets, we're going to take and talk about places you can go with your kids. I've got award winning brewers and winemakers lined up to have conversations about their craft. We're going to talk about the world's kite museum down in Long Beach. We talk about the ellensburg rodeo the omax Stampede, the Washington State Fair. Maybe you will always want to hike Mount Rainier. We're going to talk to people that have succeeded in that and they'll tell you their stories in ways that You probably have not heard previously. Are you into snowboarding? Maybe you like to drive rally cars. There's so much we can go over in Washington State. And I'm so excited to bring it all to you. So I just ask that you subscribe, and give us a chance we're gonna get better at storytelling, we'll get smoother and I'll get more comfortable behind the mic. And maybe you won't want to call your eyes out. Actually, because that'd be your ears, wouldn't it? Anyway, you get the idea. This is kind of who I am. I'm a little bit of reverence. But I love where I live. And I'm super proud of Washington State. And it's great to know that so many other people are doing some amazing things here. And that might be you too. So if you've got an interesting story, and you'd like to share with our listeners, or maybe you know somebody that does have that interesting story as well. Please give me an email. You can reach me at my email address a podcast at explore Washington State calm. Please just give us the names and contact information and People you think would be good interview and we'll reach out to them. And then each week, you can listen to our new stories. And hopefully, you know, get out there and explore Washington because there's always more to explore. Thank you so much for listening to me. I know you got a lot of choices in what you can listen to online. And if you found this podcast, and you're still here, I'm internally grateful. So until until our next episode, thanks a lot. And the tagline is, there's always more to explore. Take care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai